Harvey was almost certainly more intense than it would have been in the absence of human-caused warming, which means stronger winds, more wind damage and a larger storm surge.

…Finally, the more tenuous but potentially relevant climate factors: part of what has made Harvey such a devastating storm is the way it has stalled near the coast. It continues to pummel Houston and surrounding regions with a seemingly endless deluge, which will likely top out at nearly 4ft (1.22m) of rainfall over a days-long period before it is done.
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The stalling is due to very weak prevailing winds, which are failing to steer the storm off to sea, allowing it to spin around and wobble back and forth.

Mann gained fame after the publication of the famous hockey stick graph “proving” man-made global warming. The trouble is, that graph has been fisked by other scientists:

… The appalling nature of Mann’s stick is, already, an open secret within the scientific community. Let’s reprise the words of Dr John Christy, the fellow who created the satellite temperature record, which is a more useful contribution to science than anything Mann has come up with. This is from Dr Christy’s damning evidence to Congress:
Regarding the Hockey Stick of IPCC 2001 evidence now indicates, in my view, that an IPCC Lead Author working with a small cohort of scientists, misrepresented the temperature record of the past 1000 years by (a) promoting his own result as the best estimate, (b) neglecting studies that contradicted his, and (c) amputating another’s result so as to eliminate conflicting data and limit any serious attempt to expose the real uncertainties of these data.

The “IPCC Lead Author” John Christy is talking about is Michael Mann (Dr Christy himself contributed to the 2001 IPCC report).

Therefore, his analysis of Harvey must be treated as pure speculation.

Mars is emerging from an ice age, a finding that could shed light on the past and future climates of both Mars and Earth, researchers said…Previous Martian climate models suggested that such orbital changes could lead to ice ages on Mars, when ice would cover most of the planet. Now, researchers said they have found evidence of these ice ages on Mars.

I am highly skeptical that the Mars mission, Curiosity, has caused this sudden rise in Martian temperatures.

Furthermore, if you tabulate all the known hurricanes that have stuck this nation by decade throughout American history since 1850, you find that there has been little variation in frequency:

A more detailed review of weather data and news reports shows that this nation has been struck by significant storms throughout. The hurricane that hit Galveston, Texas in 1900 was a Category 4 storm, like Hurricane Harvey. Yet, there was substantially less of the dreaded “global warming gas emissions” by human then in recent years.

As predictable as all of this climate change coverage is, the response by the public to the current eco-activist push will warm the heart of Legal Insurrection fans. Here are some tweets in response to a Politico story:

Didnt Al Gore say after Katrina, that due to climate change, hurricanes would become more frequent & stronger? Harvey was 1st one in 12 yrs

Same old tropes and canards. I’m surprised the MSM were on the ball enough to remember to do a universal “find & replace” to substitute all the “Katrina” references with “Harvey” when they recycled their old BS fearmongering articles about “global warming” / “climate change.”

Harvey was almost certainly more intense than it would have been in the absence of human-caused warming, which means stronger winds, more wind damage and a larger storm surge.

The Harvey problem has been rain. Not “stronger winds”, not “more wind damage”, not “storm surge”.

The stalling is due to very weak prevailing winds, which are failing to steer the storm off to sea, allowing it to spin around and wobble back and forth.

Mann is trying to play the detestable old “I told you so” game … except that he didn’t tell us so. A static hurricane—or, for that matter, any other kind of storm—which just sits in one place and pisses down rain for days was not predicted by the Warmunists. Not even the famous non-Nobel Laureate Micheal Mann can claim credit for predicting something he didn’t actually predict. But he’ll certainly try. If we’re dumb enough to fall for it, well, that’s our fault.

The fact that the hurricane stalled out over land and didn’t move as more intense hurricanes normally do would show me that there was actually less intensity. The high tide, storm surge and then the constant rainfall for four days is the cause. Not the intensity of the storm. Pictures of wind damage don’t appear to be of that much concern. The flooding is the issue. Hurricane Andrew in South Florida many years ago was an intense hurricane and the wind damage was the major cause of the damage. There were entire blocks of homes that were simply gone. Not flooded but gone. That is an intense hurricane! Mike Mann is a proven liar just like hillary. He, like she will NEVER get his reputation back.

The only effect steering currents had on Harvey was to move it north, into the Texas coast. The problem that Harvey encountered was a double high pressure ridge both northwest and to it northeast. This trapped the system slightly inland of the Texas coast. As the two ridges moved eastward, it has allowed Harvey to move east and northeast. Having two high pressure areas moving in train across the central and lower plains states is not unusual in late summer. It is what trapped Allison in the same position in 2001. Also, the more intense a hurricane is, the more it affected by high pressure centers. High pressure and low pressure centers have opposite wind rotations. These winds tend to repel the centers of the circulation. and, just as with magnets, the strong the winds the greater the repulsion.

Andrew was a cat 5 storm with, possibly, 200mph sustained winds. I say possibly, because it appears that there were a large number of tornadoes embedded in the area of the eye wall which could account for the high wind reading. The amount of structural damage in Homestead was largely due to the large number of house trailers in that city. Damage in South Dade was largely the result of roofs blown off due to a lack of window coverings and some roof failures due to non-building code compliant roof construction practices. It was a pretty big scandal locally.

There have been some pictures of extensive wind damage from the area just east of Corpus Christi, where hurricane winds existed. But, Houston got little or no tropical storm force winds. Wind damage there was very minor. But floods are much more photogenic. Pictures of people wading through knee and waist deep water, while the news commentator wrings his hands and cries, “Oh, the humanity,” have much greater emotional impact than a pile of sticks that used to be someone’s home. South Florida suffered quite a bit from Katrina and Wilma in 2005, but that got little attention, nationally. Even the damage to Pensacola, as well as the flood damage to the rest of the US, from Ivan, in 2004 didn’t make much of a blip in the news cycle. But, let there be a flood with little wind damage, like Katrina, Allison, and now Harvey and the news media goes wild. Visual impact is everything. And the newsies don’t have to risk themselves to high winds and blowing debris.

Assuming Harvey was more intense (a weak assumption, for a Cat 4 that promptly subsides to a tropical storm), one couldd argue that a 12-year hiatus might have resulted in a kind of pent-up demand for mixing, and therefore increased intensity.

Or, we can just recognize that the guy, who told us the dog ate his data, has no credibility.

1968 is the year I moved to San Jose when it then had a population of about 227,000, now 1 million+. Livermore was nothing more than s couple legacy vineyards(Wente, Concannon), grasslands for cattle grazing and a small research laboratory (Lawrence Livermore. San Jose was mostly orchard as was most of the South Bay and what has become Silicon Valley. The major roads were mostly two-lane. Traffic was so sparse we frequently made day trips to Lake Tahoe and back, which is now impossible.

Coming from back East, I was at first amazed how few residences had air conditioning. Mornings were cooled by fog coming over the Santa Cruz Mountains. Evenings on the hottest days were cooled by breezes from SF Bay.

What has changed is ghe grasslands and orchards are but a memory, replaced by shopping malls, car dealerships office parks and endless residential subdivisions. The two lane roads are urban boulevards and major arteries. Freeways are everywhere. What was grass, dirt and trees is now blacktop parking lots, tar roofs and asphalt everywhere. Our scorcher weekend is not due to climate, it is due to that the population centers of the Bay Area have been turned into urban heat islands. The morning fog and evening breezes now must compete with all the stored heat being radiated from all that tar, asphalt and blacktop. Overnight lows are now higher, warmer mornings and evenings allow daytime temperatures to become even higher Heat islands, not climate are responsible for the upcoming scorcher.